Tag: GTA 4

If some square comes up to you and starts decrying video games for setting a bad example, just tell them about L.A. Noire. You’re a cop! In black and white too if you like (and I do like). The game is set in a fictional 1940s Los Angeles, similar to the world of L.A. Confidential and with the procedural, detective feel or Dragnet.

When entering the world of L.A. Noire, I felt like I was half in the past and half in a film from the golden age of Hollywood. While the setting and cases feel as though they could be realistic, the characters definitely feel much larger than life. From an alcoholic, thrice divorced homicide detective, to the almost ‘movie star’ cop at vice.

This is a game where it pays to play your role properly and you’re penalised for doing anything too ‘dickish’. Running people over and crashing cars through shopfront windows isn’t a great idea and it’s always better to apprehend a suspect than shoot them in the head, and your gun can only be drawn when required.

Limitations (if you want to name them that) aside, calling this GTA 1940s from a cop’s perspective would be doing this game a great disservice. It’s a very different experience, although I appreciate having a character with their own personality. The ‘blank page’ player character is often disappointing in a game based around a strong narrative.

The Batmobile, if Batman was Howard Hughes.

Finding the bonus cars seems a little arbitrary, since you have to go back and get them every time you want to use them. However it is a better system than GTA 4, since you can easily find them when you really want to show you friends.

I’ve yet to finish this game, but I’m approaching the finale. It’ll be good, I can feel it.

The fantasy days of Phantom Corsairs, acceptable racism and violence against women seem so far away.

I always find myself doing a peculiar thing when playing GTA 4. Just as a taxi is slowing down to drop me off, I’ll press the left bumper (or whatever key it was for the PC version) and Niko will break the window next to him.

Usually you break car windows so you can get your gun out and start cappin’. But not in this situation.

I pay the taxi driver and leave him with glass all over his back seat. There is never any reaction from people, apart from any friends who are watching.

It always raises a chuckle.

Is there anything like this any of you guys do? Any game not just GTA 4.